‘Hillary started birther lie’
Trump claims rival behind Obama’s birthplace conspiracy
Trump claims rival behind Obama’s birthplace conspiracy
WASHINGTON: Even as Donald Trump sought to close the door on the false conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, he peddled another lie by claiming that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, was behind it. There is no evidence that is true.
“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it,” Trump declared on Friday in a brief statement at the end of a televised campaign appearance in which he touted his new hotel and his endorsements from military veterans.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period,” he added. “Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”
It was a spectacle that exemplified all the most extraordinary aspects of Trump’s unorthodox candidacy: his ability to game the media, his embrace of conspiracy theories, and his pattern of repeating fallacies, even in the face of contradicting facts. And it centered around the “birther” issue that fuelled his political rise.
His appearance, in a sprawling ballroom at Trump International Hotel near the White House, turned into a de facto commercial for his campaign and property, as the major cable news networks aired the full event live in anticipation of comments Trump had hyped for hours.
“I’m going to be making a major statement on this whole thing and what Hillary did,” he told the Fox Business Network. “We have to keep the suspense going, okay?”
While some backers of Clinton’s primary campaign against Obama eight years ago raised the question of Obama’s birthplace, Clinton herself has long denounced it as a “racist lie”.
“Trump has spent years peddling a racist conspiracy aimed at undermining the first African-American president,” Clinton tweeted after his event. “He can’t just take it back.” Trump was the most prominent proponent of the “birther” idea, using it to build his political profile and his conservative credentials.
Friday marked the first time he said in no uncertain terms Obama was US-born, but he left without taking questions and did not explain how or when he’d come to that conclusion.